Beauty Break: Marisa Berenson

Happy 67th birthday to Marisa Berenson. This New York born multilingual beauty, originally a model, has been around forever and in key films, too. Her film career couldn't sustain its major start but few careers could have. Consider that in her first decade acting she made  Death in Venice (1971), Cabaret (1972), Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) and Blake Edwards S.O.B. (1981). Tough acts to follow, no? She was never prolific, opting for the occasional TV guest spot and films here and there in various countries, but that face -- memorable and impossibly beautiful.

According to IMDb she was rumored for a Vivien Leigh biopic in the 1970s (and wouldn't that be both a challenge and a coup for the right actress?) but the film sadly never materialized. 

More of the impossible beauty [nsfw] of Marisa Berenson after the jump...

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A Year With Kate: Break of Hearts (1935)

Episode 7 of 52 wherein Anne Marie screens all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order. 

In which we ignore the movie for a beauty break

Question: Does anybody know what “Break of Hearts” means? I’m guessing it was 30’s slang for “recycled romance plotline.” Break of Hearts is another tired story which follows the predictable cycle of heartbreak and forgiveness between the Ambitious Girl (Kate) and the Troubled Artist (Charles Boyer). But who cares?

The real joy in this film is the costume design by Bernard Newman, the RKO designer responsible for every bizarrely wonderful dress Ginger Rogers wore in Top Hat and Swingtime. This is the only time Newman costumed Kate, so let us take a moment to appreciate Hepburn’s most enjoyable gowns since that moth number in Christopher Strong. [More...]

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Beauty Break: Smoking Kills (Glamorously)

Confessions, multiple: I have never been a smoker, I've been thrilled and proud of my friends whenever they've kicked the habit, I have never once missed the days when bars / restaurants allowed smoking...

... but I miss smoking in the movies. 

Rock Hudson blowing smoke rings

Fifty years ago this very day the Surgeon General first deemed it hazardous to your health and over the next fifty years it's slowly faded from the movies. Nowadays when you see smoking onscreen, it's nearly always to signify "rebellious character" or "villain" or is shot through some sharp retro-commentary filters: see everything about everyone in Mad Men or David Straitharn's whole act in Goodnight, and Good Luck. 

I know smoking is wrong. I know it kills. I hate the way it smells. But those tendrils of smoke on screen or a movie star's lips around a cigarette look so damn sexy. Here's proof...

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Beauty Break: Girl With a Pearl Earring

abstew here with a look back at 2003 with Scarlett Johansson as the Girl With A Pearl Earring and the actual Vermeer painting that inspired the film.

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Beauty Break: The Fiennes Profile

this photoshoot adorned many a wallRalph Fiennes's original heyday in the mid 90s pre-dated 99.9% of the online movie world we know today (including the existence of The Film Experience in any of its forms) so I've probably never revealed to you how hard I crushed in the 90s. We used to cut his pictures out of magazines to hang them on the wall. My best friend had an even bigger thing for him and thus a veritable shrine. We felt mutual guilt given that this started with, you know, Ammon Goeth. (Don't judge!)

I felt a tinge of that old eroticism again watching the Grand Budapest Hotel trailer last week ("I sleep with all my friends"... friends? what about your fans, Fiennes, your fans!?!). Now, Wes Anderson movies are not usually with the sexytime so I'm guessing Gustav's bedhopping exploits are strictly diegetic.

Those old tingly feelings returned the second he went into profile in the trailer. Oh god, that profile. 

Even when I crudely photoshop it, it's beautiful and timeless... or at least retro timeless like a daguerrotype boyfriend. I've always thought it was beyond perfect, the Most Handsomest and Profiliest Profile in The Movies. 

The English Patient understood that and constantly offered it up in both moving pictures and promotional stills.

And in some perverse way I think the Harry Potter franchise did too, desecrating and perverting its holy planes (sculpted by God himself) by removing the nose entirely.

What are some of your favorite movie profiles?